Contents

Description:
Candidates should be able to configure BIND to function as a caching-only DNS server. This objective includes the ability to convert older BIND configuration files to newer format, managing a running server and configuring logging.

Key knowledge area(s):

BIND 8.x and 9.x configuration files, terms and utilities

Defining the location of the BIND zone files in BIND configuration files

Reloading modified configuration and zone files

The following is a partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

To speed up the cumbersome process of DNS queries, DNS servers usually cache answers from other DNS servers – even negative queries (i.e an authoritative server's answer « name does not exist » is also cached by your local DNS)

Configuring BIND as a caching-only nameserver involves setting up only a « . » zone, that is, only tell it about the root nameservers and not specifying any zones, as follows :

zone « . » in {
type hint;
file « named.cache »;
};

The file named.cache can be generated by using dig @a.root-servers.net

Logging in BIND is controlled by two main concepts : channels and categories A channel specifies where logged data goes : to syslog, to a file, etc... A category specifies what data is logged

Channels allows you to filter messages by priority, like syslog's priorities. They are essentially the same, but two more are available for BIND : debug and dynamic, which affect debug level logging Debug sets a debug level, which will be active after the first trace command is given via ndc; dynamic will increment and decrement debug levels after each trace command is given via ndc